| This week marked President Donald Trump’s first full month of his second term. It was a tumultuous week, underscoring his administration’s disregard for norms and, at times, the rule of law and international order. Here’s what happened this week in the Trump administration. Trump embraced Russia over Ukraine Last week, Trump stunned Europe by calling Russia’s president and promising to “work together, very closely” as he seeks an end to Russia’s years-long war in Ukraine. Russia, up until now, has been on the opposite side of the war the United States has been on. Then this week, Trump repeated false Russian propaganda: that Ukraine “started” the war and Ukraine’s president is a “dictator.” As The Washington Post’s Fact Checker Glenn Kessler notes, Trump unleashed a wave of false claims about Ukraine. In reality, Russia illegally invaded Ukraine three years ago, and the nation hasn’t been able to hold elections while it’s being attacked. Helping defend Ukraine from a takeover is something the United States had previously said is necessary to counter global influence from Russia and China and defend democratic governments, a goal generally shared by Republicans in Congress. Trump rarely talks about Russia in the same harsh language, notes The Post’s Aaron Blake. We don’t know why Trump is so warm to Russia, he adds. But it’s increasingly clear Trump is willingly overt about his apparent Russian sympathies when it comes to the war in Ukraine, and he’s potentially upping U.S. foreign policy in the process. He’s testing the bounds of democracy even more Trump quoted one of history’s most infamous dictators, Napoleon Bonaparte, while he mused that he should run for an unconstitutional third term. No, he can’t run for a third term. The Constitution forbids it, and if he tries, legal experts warn it would merit a constitutional crisis, rendering the principles and shared values this nation was founded on obsolete. Some experts say we’re already in a constitutional crisis. Trump and his billionaire donor Elon Musk are dismantling agencies and programs that were set up by a different branch of government, Congress. “There is no other way to describe an executive branch acting as if the legislative branch was consultative,” Ben Raderstorf, who is with the group Protect Democracy and author of the newsletter “If You Can Keep It,” told me earlier this month. Trump seems to be trying to steamroll the judicial branch, too: After he lost initial battles in court over what the president can unilaterally do, several judges accused his administration of ignoring their orders and just doing it anyway. Trump also appears to be commandeering traditionally independent agencies under the branch of government he controls — the executive — for his own political goals. This week, another government prosecutor in the Justice Department resigned rather than launch an investigation she felt was unwarranted. It’s one of several resignations in the Justice Department over the past two weeks, and taken together, legal experts say it’s “alarming.” “One of the nice things about this country is you have a Justice Department that can work independently, and investigate and prosecute crimes, and find justice,” said Evan Gotlob, a former federal prosecutor in New York City in the first Trump administration, now with Lucosky Brookman law firm, in a recent interview. “It’s a little alarming that we’re a month after inauguration, and we’ve already had multiple issues.” It raises the possibility Trump is steering the considerable resources of the government to a more authoritarian state, where a small group of people amass much of the power. Kimberly Wehle, with the University of Baltimore Law School and author of the newsletter “Simple Politics,” likened the rule of law to speeding: “A speed limit doesn’t slow down drivers. It’s the ticket for speeding that does,” she told me this week. “The rule of law is the mechanism to ensure that too much power doesn’t amass in one place — because unlimited power is abused. It’s just human nature.” At the same time that Trump was pushing the boundaries of presidential power beyond anything in presidential history, Senate Republicans approved a retribution-bent conspiracy theorist to lead the FBI, the nation’s crime-fighting agency. His popularity is falling Slashing the size of the federal government has been one of Trump’s top priorities. It’s an easy political target: The federal government is opaque, large and faceless. But the way Trump is going about it may be turning off Americans, according to polls one month in. Many of his policies — including shutting down agencies and laying off federal workers — are unpopular; a majority of Americans say he’s exceeded his authority as president; and his overall popularity is declining, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll out this week, one that mirrors other polls. Rather than have the benefit of the doubt from voters that he’s acting decisively in their best interests, Trump and his administration may soon be on the defensive about their actions and how they benefit Americans. “The firestorm right now is confined to the Beltway, and out in the rest of the country, there is the general sense that ‘Well, at least something is happening,’” William Galston, head of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said in a recent interview. “But I predict if they keep on going down this road, there’s going to be a big bump in it, in the form of service slowdowns that can be traced back to what they’re doing now.” | 
